The first service pack for Microsoft's extremely popular Windows 7 operating system was just announced. It's expected to land late this year, accompanied by the first service pack for Microsoft 's business-minded Windows Server 2008 R2 OS. (Source: Telegraph UK)

Packs are expected land sometime in Q4

Microsoft
today announced that
it was preparing to deliver Service Pack 1 for its tremendously
popular new operating system, Windows 7, and its
business-minded server operating system, Windows Server 2008
R2.

Service packs provide Microsoft with the opportunity to
package together bug fixes and security fixes (which have typically
been previously delivered piece-wise to consumers over Windows
Update). They also provide a place for Microsoft to deliver new
content. As Microsoft's retail releases come less frequently
than those of its chief competitor Apple, Service Packs are crucial
to Microsoft's OSs having a healthy lifecycle.

Among the
highest profile updates expected for Windows 7 SP1 is the inclusion
of USB
3.0 support. Many manufacturers are already stepping up to
the plate and delivering USB 3.0 capable motherboards.

For
Windows Server 2008 R2, the big news is the inclusion of two
important virtualization technologies: Dynamic Memory and Remote FX.
Dynamic Memory enhances Microsoft's Hyper-V, allowing it to monitor
the memory usage of all the virtual machines running on the host.
The Hyper-V pools all the physically available memory and then
divvies it up as necessary. This should help prevent memory
shortages on busy virtual machines and avoid wasting resources on
underutilized VMs, all at a minimum administrative expense.

The
other technology, Remote FX is used to deliver richer graphics to
virtual machines. It runs on both thick and thin client hosts.
According to Microsoft, it supports "any" screen content,
including Silverlight or Flash.

Windows 7 and Windows Server
2008 R2 share a common code base, so the simultaneous service pack
release makes sense. As to when the release might land, you can
look at the history of Windows Vista for clues. Windows Vista's
first service pack was announced at a similar time -- approximately
five months after the operating system's release. It end up
being released in beta form in September '07, in RC form in December,
and in finalized form in mid-March. If Windows 7 and Windows
Server 2008 R2 follow a similar release pattern, the beta could come
as early as May, the RC would likely arrive in August, and the final
build would air in November.

Interestingly, Windows 7 and it
server brethren have been so well received that the service pack may
not be as important. A recent
survey by Dimensional Research revealed that 46 percent of
information technology administrators said they would not wait
until SP1's release to install Windows 7. That's a surprising
number, considering admins usually wait until a Windows OS hits SP1.
It's certainly a testimony to the new faith in Windows 7, both in the
public and the tech community.

Comments

Threshold

Username

Password

remember me

This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

I tested Windows 7 RC and was happy. No problems with our systems so we went live with it as soon as it was released. In the past I would wait for sp1 but with win7 I never felt the need as its a very polished OS.

Rolling out an new OS on a massive scale is much easier said than done.. Heck my company still has software dependent on IE7 that are commonly used around the world. (Microstrategy for one only works on IE7 or less, while Windows 7 ships with 8).

So yes its far more polished, has much better security and is an all around better user experience, but when that is not going to trump basic required functionality.

My company is waiting for SP1 in particular because they don't want to have to test everything again. I still remember all the trouble XP sp2 caused.. For all intents and purposes its a waste of money, and its not really going to dramatically increase productivity and in the end, your bottom line right away. (now I am sure security experts would not agree, but security experts don't run large companies, and do not have to adhere to investors/stockholders)